


No Need for Poison

by FreshBrains



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Anger, Community: comment_fic, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Extremely Dubious Consent, Forced Marriage, Gen, POV Regina, Rape Recovery, Young Evil Queen | Regina Mills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 02:20:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2252232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreshBrains/pseuds/FreshBrains
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She could deal with bitterness just fine; there would always be room for it beneath her elegant, stiff-backed gowns and winter furs, beneath the smiles she painted on for Snow.  But after weeks, then months, without producing a male heir for Leopold, she was asked the unthinkable, and her bitterness bled into hatred.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Need for Poison

**Author's Note:**

> For the LJ comment_fic prompt: _Once Upon A Time. any. Creating a monster._
> 
>  **A note on the warnings:** Because I don't like adding tags, I did not create a new one that would be handy, which would be **spousal rape.** Rape is rape, but I know some readers would like more context, especially looking at the other tags. I did not write anything that could not have very feasibly happened in canon.

“Don’t let this make you bitter, my darling.  You’re his queen.  What’s a night in bed compared to a lifetime of luxury?”  Cora tapped her spoon against her tea-cup, elegant and infallible in her dark clothes and the icy set of her mouth.

Regina shifted in her seat, her body still aching, still tender from its invasion.  “I am _not_ bitter, Mother.”  _Not anymore,_ she added silently, her tea-cup trembling as she lifted it to her mouth.

She’d always been bitter, ever since she saw Daniel crumpled on the stable floors, the hay turning bloody beneath him.  She’d had a darkness in her since that day, a poison running through her veins.  She could deal with bitterness just fine; there would always be room for it beneath her elegant, stiff-backed gowns and winter furs, beneath the smiles she painted on for Snow.  She’d only ever told Tinker Bell about the oozing, squeezing feeling of anger in her chest, the way it turned into warm syrup after a while, the way it kept her warm in the castle.

But after weeks, then months, without producing a male heir for Leopold, she was asked the unthinkable, and her bitterness bled into hatred.

“It couldn’t have been _that_ bad,” Cora sniffed, patting Regina’s palm like they were in on a secret, like they shared the burdens of being queens.  “Really, Regina.”

(She didn’t know where to put her hands…she used to glide her hands along the planes of Daniel’s back when they kissed, or tangle her fingers in his hair.  But with Leopold, she kept them at her sides, stiff as rolling pins, coated in cold sweat.

Her legs were sore, parted too far, splayed obscenely on either side of his brutish hips, and she watched her toes bob in the air like wine-corks in a pail of water—if she wasn’t crying quietly into the pillow-case, she’d laugh.

“My bride,” Leopold muttered into her shoulder, mouth slack and damp beneath the top of her night-dress.  The hem was pushed up to her armpits.  He finished, finally, after what felt like a century of rutting, and collapsed on top of her.  Later, after he left her to her private chambers, Regina cleaned herself until she was sore, until she was raw from soap and wool.  It felt better than _him_

The sheets went into the fire, and Regina went out into the garden, where she sat beneath her apple tree and ate apple after apple, the crisp meat bursting in her mouth, the juice running down her chin.  She ate her apples, and she cried, because that was all she could do.)

Regina clenched her fingers hard enough to hear the porcelain of the cup creak, and then relaxed them, letting the ease run up her wrist.  “Of course, Mother.  It was not that bad.  I was simply surprised.”  She took an apple from the basket she set out for tea and took a bite—it was firm and sour, with just an edge of acid.  She let it set into her teeth, make her jaw ache, before she swallowed it half-chewed, her throat rebelling.  It was a beastly feeling, hot and miserable like a stone in her belly, but Regina allowed herself to smile around the taste.  Bitter was boring, and it was time for her to grow up.


End file.
